this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2025
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Electric Vehicles
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One thing that bothers me is that there are so many battery technologies:
Lithium ion, semi-solid state, solid state; and so many variants within each technology.
Replacement batteries may become difficult to source if you choose a vehicle that has one that happens to become unsupported.
An electric car isn't like a smartphone: When the battery starts going south, it's not affordable to just recycle it and get a new one.
And it's not like a digital camera either: The rechargeable batteries aren't cheap and small enough to where you can hoard up on batteries in case the manufacturer goes belly up.
Car batteries are not like phone batteries. Our brand has had BEV for 13 years now, and we have never seen a battery that requires replacement due to degradation. And for those oldest ones, there are aftermarket companies now selling new battery packs with more modern battery tech that significantly increases the range over what it was new. I don’t know why people think an EV battery is only going to last 5-6 years.
That's what I expect from a phone or laptop. I know car batteries are supposed to be more long lived, but I don't know what makes one Li battery last longer than another. Many EV manufacturers haven't been in the game long enough to prove it.
Short version; lithium cells operate on a sort of continuum between power density and peak discharge rate. Individual cells are usually built to drain only as fast as is needed to maximize how much total power they can hold.
The batteries for phones usually just have a single lithium cell, maybe up to three or four for some laptops, but the load of an electric car's motors and electronics is spread among hundreds of cells. The relatively slow charge/discharge rate needed per cell makes for a slower rate of degredation overall compared to what you're used to.
That's very concisely and neatly explained, thank you.